


A City for Lovers

by beetle



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Inception
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:26:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this inception_kink prompt, "I just want something where Arthur is trembling so badly for whatever reason, Eames has to hold him. For whatever reason, sick, terrified*, hypothermia, side-effect of a compound, post coital come-down, anything. Just as long as it is wracking full body tremors and Eames is there. *Don't make him a wimp though please. I'd like to see him tough it out anyway. I think it would take a lot to really scare our favorite point man."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A City for Lovers

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not done for profit.  
> Notes: IMPLIED NON-CON. I've tried to handle the subject with sensitivity, but I'm aware I may not have entirely succeeded. That said, and comments with suggestions or advice on how to tweak this fic and make it better will be much appreciated.

Arthur is trembling the first time Eames leans in and kisses him.  
  
They’re walking side by side down the Rue Bonaparte, toward the Seine. It’s a spring night (verging on early morning), and the air is still rather chilly. Arthur is leaning a little toward Eames, who admittedly throws off heat like a mid-sized furnace, and their arms brush every so often.  
  
The silence between them is long, comfortable, yet charged, too. Arthur has the most delicious almost-smile on his usually solemn face. Eames thinks, not for the first time, that he’d like to kiss and tease that almost-smile into an actual grin—the kind that’d show those irresistible, though rarely seen dimples off to perfection.  
  
“I’m assuming that one day, you’ll tell me your real name,” Arthur says out of nowhere, when they reach the Place Furstemberg. His voice is lazy with contentment and humor.  
  
“But darling, I’d have told you  _ages_  ago, if you’d asked,” Eames murmurs, and Arthur swings their arms a little.  
  
“Hmm. Okay. So, what’s your real name?”  
  
Eames stops and pulls Arthur into his arms, noting the way those dark, dark eyes widen with surprise. “Ages ago, I’d have told you for free, but now, it’ll cost you, won’t it?”  
  
Arthur exhales, his fingers linking and locking with Eames’s. “I see. And what’ll it cost me? I’m a poor, penniless man, you know.”  
  
Eames snorts and pulls Arthur closer, till their bodies are flush against each other. Neither of them is hard yet, but Eames can feel the first stirrings in himself. He wonders if Arthur is on the same page, and decides to find out.  
  
“Dearest, your money or lack thereof interests me not at all. My price is far less gauche.” Eames leans in to whisper in Arthur’s ear, noting also that Arthur shivers when Eames’s breath warms his cheek. “My price is a kiss, darling.”  
  
Arthur laughs, a startled bark that echoes briefly off the very vault of heaven, and all around the Place Furstemberg. He leans back to look at Eames disbelievingly. “You’re joking, right?”  
  
“Mm, I can assure you that I’ve rarely been more serious.”  
  
Arthur searches his eyes, that disbelieving look slowly fading. “You tell me your name and I kiss you?”  
  
“Actually,  _I_  kiss  _you_ , and then I tell you my name.”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Arthur laughs once more, low and quiet this time. “I see,” he says again, also shivering again—although Eames couldn’t swear he’d ever stopped.  
  
“Well?” Arthur’s eyebrows quirk up, and he licks his lips. “Are you gonna kiss me, already, or just leave me to die of suspense?”  
  
“What an impatient, unromantic little sod you are,” Eames murmurs, squeezing Arthur’s fingers within his own, before wrapping his arms—and thus Arthur’s—around Arthur’s narrow waist, pressing their bodies even closer together.  
  
Those unreadable eyes flutter in something that’s not quite a blink, and stay at half-mast. Eames smirks, drawing out the process off drawing closer, letting his gaze flick to and focus on Arthur’s slightly puckered lips.  
  
Arthur’s shivering becomes more pronounced and he licks his lips again.  
  
“If you don’t hurry up and kiss me, I’m gonna knee-cap you, and let you hobble back to your hotel by yourself,” he threatens breathlessly, and Eames chuckles, letting go of one of Arthur’s hands to cup the back of his head, guiding it closer, till their lips brush and Arthur makes the most delicious moan.  
  
“My name,” Eames whispers, “is Julian.“  _Peck_. “James.”  _Nibble_. “Ashton.”  _Lick._  “The third.” _Kiss_.  
  
And a rather brief kiss, at that.  
  
Arthur moans again, so yearningly, Eames does start to get hard. And the shivering, which is starting to feel like a frenetic sort of shimmy, isn’t helping matters.  
  
“That’s . . . possibly the most British name I’ve ever heard,” Arthur says softly, each word a gentle puff of air on Eames’s lips. His free arm winds around Eames’s waist. “I think I like Eames better.”  
  
“So do I,” Eames agrees, and it turns into another kiss, this one considerably less chaste than the first. At the first flick of Eames’s tongue, Arthur’s lips part and Eames finds himself swallowing another one of those  _moans_. His tongue duels lazily with Arthur’s till he’s making some interesting noises of his own. Till Arthur can’t help but feel how hard he’s getting. . . .  
  
“Eames,” he breaks the kiss to say, and Eames follows him closely, initiating another kiss, pushing his hips into Arthur’s, searching for hardness to answer his own and not finding it.  
  
“Eames.” Arthur makes another sound, this one noticeably less pleased than the previous ones. “ _Julian. Stop._ ”  
  
Arthur pulls away from him, taking a few steps back, out of Eames’s arms. Surprised, Eames doesn’t try to hold onto him.  
  
“Too fast?” he asks, trying to sound less disappointed than he feels. Arthur shrugs, looking everywhere but at him, and shaking like a leaf, his whole body seeming to vibrate with it. It’s more than a little unnerving. “You’re shaking, darling.”  
  
“Yeah, well, it’s kinda chilly, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Arthur laughs, but it sounds put-on.  
  
“Not quite  _that_  chilly.” Eames frowns, really taking a  _look_  at Arthur: he’s gone quite pallid, hectic red spots high on his cheekbones. His lips are swollen and pink, the bottom one held between perfect, white teeth when it’s not being nervously swiped at by an equally pink tongue.  
  
And he’s  _really_  shaking, now, under Eames’s steady gaze.  
  
“Arthur, darling—“ Eames takes a step toward Arthur who takes another step back. Then another.  
  
“Just . . . stay there,” he orders, his voice gone hard, one hand sliding under his jacket a bit. If Eames didn’t know better, he’d swear Arthur was reaching for his gun. “I need a minute to think about this.”  
  
“A minute to think, eh? Is that why you’re reaching for the Derringer you have concealed in the lining of your jacket?”  
  
Arthur removes his hand as if it’s been scalded. “I wasn’t—“  
  
“Yes, you were.” Eames sighs. “Care to tell me why?”  
  
“Sorry, I—” Arthur makes a face Eames can’t read and looks down at his ridiculously expensive shoes. “It was just a—a reflex. Sorry.”  
  
Eames shakes his head. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, Arthur, only . . . I’m still curious as to why your reflex, upon being kissed by a rather charming, if louche gentleman, is to back away and go for your gun.” He raises an eyebrow and Arthur flushes angrily.  
  
“Look, just . . . leave it alone, okay? This was a bad idea. I’m sorry. I should go,” Arthur turns and starts walking away, back down the Rue Bonaparte, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched.  
  
Shocked into both silence and stillness, Eames watches Arthur disappear around the corner, out of sight but far from out of mind.  
  
 _Really, Julian, you aren't just going to let him walk out of your life?_  A voice says from the back of his mind. It sounds like Grandmother Ashton’s low, creaky Katherine Hepburn-voice.  
  
“But Arthur can make his own decisions, Grandmother. If he wants to walk out of my life, who'm I to stop him?” Eames mutters, turning, hands shoved in his own pockets as he starts walking toward the Seine, and Pont de l'Alma—easily the best place in Paris for a jilted lover to brood.  
  
He barely gets five moody, reluctant steps there before he’s turning back the way he came.  
  
He can’t help but remember the look in Arthur’s eyes as he’d backed away—oh, he’d taken it to be anger because of the flush in Arthur’s normally pale cheeks, but in retrospect . . . that flush could’ve easily been caused by embarrassment. Though for the life of him, Eames can’t imagine what Arthur would have to be embarrassed about, except being a bloody prick-tease. . . .  
  
 _Isn’t it worth finding out for certain?_  Grandmother Ashton whispers again.  _As you said, Julian, there’s a_ reason _one’s reaction to being kissed by a rather charming, if louche gentleman is to ‘pull a gun,’ as you say . . . you cannot seriously imagine any of those reasons to be trivial ones?_  
  
Eames sighs again, looking up at the clouded night sky, wondering if, wherever Grandmother Ashton is, she’s smiling—or, more likely, rolling her eyes—at him.  
  
“No. I certainly can’t, Grandmother,” he tells her softly, his mind quickly sifting through as many of those reasons as he can think of, but always returning to the one he dreads most.  
  
 _Oh, Arthur_. . . .  
  
In seconds, Eames takes the corner of Rue Bonaparte and in the distance he can see a lonely figure walking neither fast nor slow, shoulders hunched but head held high.  
  
“Arthur!” he calls, his voice echoing off the very vault of the heavens, and no doubt waking the whole of Rue Bonaparte. “Wait!”  
  
The figure pauses—looks around—and Eames could swear he sees the shaking from here. . . .  
  
But Arthur . . . waits.  
  
And Eames runs to him, nonetheless.


End file.
